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John Dingell and the Tea Party

It did, however, bother him (though he would never say so) to be called Dirty Dingell and tailpipe Johnny by the left, to have his office picketed by the Sierra Club, and to be viewed by fellow liberals as a toady for the Big Three automakers. From a smog-choked California district that included Beverly Hills came a short but no less brash congressman named Henry Waxman, who managed to get on Dingell’s committee. In Waxman’s slice of America, children and senior citizens were dying of lung and heart diseases as a result of the polluters in Dingell’s America. A decade’s worth of legislative mano à mano between the two Democrats ultimately led to the bipartisan and much-heralded Clean Air Act of 1990. But a mutual dislike now ran deep—all the more so as an alliance developed between Waxman and another Californian, Nancy Pelosi.

Dingell had supported Pelosi’s opponent, Steny Hoyer, in the 2001 whip race. She in turn campaigned on behalf of Lynn Rivers in 2002 when redistricting threw Dingell into a primary challenge with Rivers. After the Democrats regained the majority in November 2006 and the Energy and Commerce gavel fell back into John Dingell’s hand, he reverted to the methods he had used to such great effect as chairman from 1981 to 1994. He held all of the committee members to a blood oath to protect the committee’s vast jurisdiction. He worked with both sides of the aisle and the full gamut of outside advocacy groups. He developed his committee’s legislation, as he would say, “from the center”—bringing everyone to the table, hashing out differences together, and forging strong consensus.

What he had failed to recognize was that the House—and perhaps Washington politics writ large—had, between his two tenures as chairman, ceased to function in this fashion. His own leader, Nancy Pelosi, had no intention of working this way. Her speakership would instead be in the mold of her immediate Republican predecessors, Newt Gingrich and Denny Hastert. Power would be centralized. The legislative agenda would emanate from the top. Member fealty would be to her, not to chairmen like Dingell—and she would monitor their loyalty, rewarding it and punishing breaches of it. Those were the new rules, and they were clear to seemingly everyone except John Dingell.

Among Speaker Pelosi’s first acts in 2007 was to create a House Select Committee on Global Warming—which clearly poached on the Energy and Commerce chairman’s turf, and which Dingell thus proclaimed “as useful as feathers on a fish.” Henry Waxman opposed the select committee as well. As it turned out, the ongoing robustness of Energy and Commerce was something in which the Beverly Hills congressman had a vested interest.

Dingell’s friends and subordinates could smell a Waxman challenge coming. They knew as well that he had made himself vulnerable by antagonizing Speaker Pelosi. Dingell seemed thoroughly unaware of the spot he was in. During the summer of 2008, he had a conversation with Pelosi on the House floor. The subject was his continued desire to be chairman in 2009 and beyond. The speaker had said words to the effect of “You’re doing a good job.” Dingell told others that he took her remark to be an endorsement.

His wife, Deborah Dingell, was not so sanguine. The former General Motors executive had wide contacts in Washington and was hearing rumblings. One late summer afternoon in his Capitol hideaway office reserved for the lower body’s dean, Dingell’s wife convened a meeting with the congressman, a couple of current and former staffers, and longtime friend and Democratic operative Anita Dunn. Together they warned Dingell that his chairmanship could be in jeopardy. Dunn reminded him that since his 2008 general election campaign would be a cakewalk, his energies were better spent shoring up support among his colleagues. Dingell assured them that he had the backing of both the Democratic caucus and the speaker.

Dingell was due to undergo reconstructive knee surgery in October. His staff had urged him to have the procedure done in August, which might make it difficult for him to campaign for reelection in the fall but would ensure that he would be at full strength by late November, when the Democratic caucus and its new members met to vote on committee chairmanships. Dingell did not take their advice. He elected to put off the surgery until early October. He then suffered a minor cut on his knee—and so as to avoid infection, the doctors put off the procedure until the very end of October.

On November 5, 2008, the day after Barack Obama’s victory, Henry Waxman announced that he would challenge John Dingell’s chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee. The first call Dingell made when he got the news was to Nancy Pelosi. “You told me you had my back,” he said.

“That’s not what I said,” she reminded him.

Steny Hoyer wanted to avoid a bloodbath. The incoming majority leader attempted to broker a deal in which Dingell could keep his chairmanship for two more years. Waxman was not amenable. The matter would therefore be put to a vote.

On November 20, the Democrats convened in the caucus room on the third floor of the Cannon Office Building. The 32 Democratic freshmen got their first look at the incumbent chairman. Three weeks after his surgery, Dingell was pale, cadaverously thin, and wheelchair-bound. Waxman had already dined with nearly all of the freshmen and had cut $10,000 checks to their campaigns. His staff had also helpfully placed on each caucus chair a copy of a recent op-ed by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman about the Detroit auto executives who had flown to Washington in their private jets to testify as to their industry’s need for a bailout. Friedman had assailed Dingell as being “more responsible for protecting Detroit to death than any single legislator.”

Dingell’s side lost the coin toss and therefore gave their speeches first. Dingell had wanted to be the closing speaker on his behalf. But his staff and his chairman campaign whips, Bart Stupak and Mike Doyle, had prevailed on him to deliver first. They knew that he did not look good and wanted him out of the way.

Stupak wheeled Dingell up to the front of the caucus room. The chairman spoke only briefly about his past accomplishments. He instead emphasized his desire to work with President-elect Obama on finally getting a health care bill passed. It was not Dingell’s best speech, but under the circumstances he had done adequately.

The last to speak was John Lewis. The civil rights hero spoke generally about the value of maintaining the seniority system, which in recent years had been the means by which black members had at last been elevated to power. Then Lewis said, “Think about what you’re doing to this man, after all he’s done for this institution. After all he’s done for you.” None of the speakers had said a negative word about Henry Waxman. When Waxman’s turn came, his fourth speaker, an Iowa first-term congressman and former trial lawyer named Bruce Braley, took off the gloves. Dingell, said Braley, had obstructed the work of environmentalists. He had failed to get a health care bill passed out of the committee in 1994. He had been weak on consumer protection. Weak on climate change. It was a devastatingly effective and, thought Dingell’s supporters in the room, profoundly disrespectful speech.

Waxman went last. When he was finished, Nancy Pelosi—officially neutral throughout the race—was the first one out of her chair clapping. The signal was not altogether subliminal.

Dingell was standing outside the Cannon caucus room, leaning on his cane, during the 15-minute tallying of the votes. He remained convinced that victory was his—until a Democratic staffer stepped outside and gave a sad nod to Dingell’s chief of staff, Michael Robbins. Dingell turned away, even as Pelosi on the other side of the door was asking unanimous consent that John Dingell be named the committee’s “chairman emeritus,” a request that was greeted with hearty applause. He began walking down the hall with his cane. A staffer brought him his wheelchair. Dingell sat down in it and told the staffer that he had something he would like to do now.

The ex-chairman wanted to get his new member ID photo taken for the 111th Congress. And so off they went.

The image captured was that of a man in his eighties wearing a big, defiantly beatific smile.